Review: It’s only fair to say first off that the best part of Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic that’s not totally about Freddie Mercury but not really about Queen, is the final fifteen minutes. That’s where the film finally draws some electricity and commands some attention from the audience. As Mercury, star Rami Malek struts and poses with flair and gives off the kind of energy that’s been sorely missing for the previous two hours. At my screening, you could almost feel the crowd waking up and making a connection with what was happening on screen. The problem with all this is that it’s nearly a shot for shot recreation of Queen’s Live Aid performance that you could easily watch for free on YouTube. Why go to the movies to see something easily available at your personal fingertips?

The answer is Malek.

Let’s back up a bit, shall we?

Bohemian Rhapsody has finally arrived in theaters after a development process that could most kindly be called tortuous. Over the years many directors have come and gone along with potential stars. Once set to feature Sacha Baron Cohen as the late lead singer of Queen, he departed due to ‘creative differences’ and the film was eventually made with rising star Malek (Papillion) and director Bryan Singer (X-Men: Apocalypse). When filming was nearly finished, Singer was fired from the picture after not showing up for work and whatever was left to shoot was taken up by producer Dexter Fletcher. Though Singer’s name remains on the final product, the director is not doing press for the film and Malek’s own press junket has had some rocky moments.

If the film were anything memorable, this may all be a tragic series of unfortunate events but it’s so ho-hum and lazily assembled that you wonder why anyone put the effort in at all. The film was produced by two surviving members of Queen and if you believe what is in the news they had a strong hand in guiding the movie to not make anyone look that bad, except for Freddie Mercury who isn’t alive to defend himself. The screenplay by Anthony McCarten (Darkest Hour) and Peter Morgan (Rush) takes great lengths to show how Mercury caused the band to implode (though they never broke up as the film seems to suggest) and how the other members were model family men who contributed to the band’s success.

Playing like an abridged version of an already sanitized biography, the movie is never fully about the rise of Freddie who came from a traditional Pakistani family to become one of the most enigmatic but frustrating rock stars of his generation. It also isn’t really about Queen whose virtuosic talents are heard courtesy of the greatest hits soundtrack but never felt as performed by the actors taking on the other members of the band. Instead, it awkwardly hops along a middle line that fails to deliver anything we couldn’t have learned from reading the Queen Wikipedia page. There’s head-scratching leaps in time and curious historical omissions, then there are the downright oddball choices like having Mike Myers play a music industry exec who rejects Queen’s epic anthem Bohemian Rhapsody outright saying no one will be rocking out to this in their car. This from the actor that starred in Wayne’s World which featured a carful of metalheads rocking out to…guess what? It’s an unnecessary bit of goopy meta humor, one of many kooky moments that happen in the movie.

While the men playing Brian May (Gwilym Lee), Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy, Only the Brave), and John Deacon (Joe Mazzello, Jurassic Park) acquit themselves in shallow roles, two performances keep the movie afloat and both actors are working their butts off to do so. The first is Lucy Boynton (Murder on the Orient Express) as Freddie’s first love and fiancée before he comes out as gay. Though he cheats on her she remains loyal to him first as a lover and then as a confidant. When Freddie gets tangled up with a shady manager (Allen Leech, The Imitation Game) with personal and professional interests of his own, she’s the only one that calls Freddie out on his blindness and reminds him of who has always stuck by him. Boynton turns up regularly in these types of roles but she aces them all.

Then there’s Malek who is the real reason you should consider seeing the movie at all. Though saddled with a pair of false teeth to create Freddie’s pronounced overbite that feel two sizes to big, he brings out the loneliness felt by this star and that’s where some true emotion finally is felt. Though it tends toward “poor Freddie with no friends and no companion” at times (again, what does this script have against him??) Malek manages to rise above all of that and find the heart if not totally the soul of the man. If only Malek was paired with a screenplay that was willing to be a warts and all tour of Queen’s journey to fame.

It all comes into focus, though, in those final fifteen minutes which are enough to send you out of the theater on a rock and roll high. I felt it for a good day or so after I saw the film but the more I thought about the rest of the movie and it’s tuneless trappings the more I started to come back to earth. Fans of Mercury and the band have likely been waiting a long time for this biopic and maybe they’ll get what they need out of this surface skimming endeavor – but I think it will take another set of filmmakers more removed from their subject to give us the real story.

Review: While I was familiar in passing with Henri Charrière’s semi-autobiographical 1970 novel Papillion and it’s 1973 film adaption starring Steven McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, I’d never dug deep into either source material before taking in the 2018 remake. So I have little to compare and contrast to what has come before. Maybe that’s a good thing, too, because for all the bleakness and cold to the touch emotions the new Papillion employs, it seems like it would make a good rainy day selection for audiences craving something with some substance.

Set between the years of 1933 and 1941, Papillion follows petty thief Charrière (Charlie Hunnam, Pacific Rim) as is he wrongfully convicted of a murder he didn’t commit and sentenced to serve his time on a penal colony in French Guiana. The conditions are terrible and the punishments for disobeying orders (or worse, attempted escape) are brutal. Through a friendship that develops with Louis Dega (Rami Malek, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb) the two men plot an escape from the island prison but face the elements and their own demons along the way.

Fans of The Shawshank Redemption might find more than a few similarities between that film and Papillion. Both are set in hellish prisons governed by an imperious warden and feature a colorful set of supporting characters there to alienate our leads at some points and assist them in their quest at others. While the overall message of hope amidst darkness is delivered expertly in Shawshank, it’s a feeling that Papillion can’t quite relay in the same powerful way.

Danish director Michael Noer and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski (Prisoners) speed through Charrière’s life in Paris with his girlfriend (Eve Hewson, Enough Said), eager to get him convicted and en route with Dega to the island as quickly as possible. The journey by boat is a nightmare for the affluent and slight Dega, but buddying up with Charrière gets him the protection he needs to survive until he makes it to shore. The film soon gets into an episodic routine of Charrière looking out for Dega while planning an escape with fellow inmate Celier (Roland Møller, Skyscraper) and suffering various tortures for both efforts.

Though he’s often lost among the more popular actors of his generation, I find Hunnam to be a real star sitting right on the brink. He chooses interesting projects (2017’s The Lost City of Z was maybe the most unheralded movie of that year) and commits himself completely to his work (maybe that commitment to material he believes in is why he famously bowed out of a leading role in Fifty Shades of Grey) and that same talent is on display here. Charrière gets put through the ringer and Hunnam ably takes us through every heinous step of his imprisonment. Still, he doesn’t let the character wallow too long and while he maintains some impeccably clean teeth even after years in solitary confinement, his physical and emotional transformation is largely impressive.

I still wish I understood why people are trying to make Rami Malek happen as a leading man. He’s supposedly wonderful on TV’s Mr. Robot but I’ve yet to be thrilled by any of the work he’s done on screen. He talks like he has a frog in his throat and maintains skittish tics that feel like nuances derived from Acting 101 textbooks. Malek’s big test will be playing Freddy Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody later this year and while he’s perfectly fine as the bug-eyed Dega, he’s matched with an actor that strong arms him in more ways than one.

The cinematography from Hagen Bogdanski and the production design from Tom Meyer (The Internship) are top notch, putting you right into the heat and horrible conditions within the prison. There’s some wonderfully intricate designs that make you curious to explore the space…an impressive accomplishment as the space we want more time in in a dingy prison and, later, an island cut-off from the rest of the prisoners.

Even pushing past the two hour running length, the opening and closing of Papillion feel rushed and unfinished. It’s frustrating for films to feel constructed around attention spans as opposed to story and that dings the effort a bit in my book. Still, Papillion is another film like the recently released Alpha that are better than their meager roll-outs suggest. Like Alpha, it’s a film you’re going to have to work to see and work harder to get comfortable with. Those willing to make that pact are likely to be rewarded.

Review: Though I want you to read the whole review, let me say right off the bat that there’s no real need to see Need for Speed. It’s a hare-brained, noisy, overlong film that most will probably find subpar in comparison to other muscles and muscle car films like Fast & Furious 6. Even with that disclaimer, I’ll tell you that I found myself enjoying Need for Speed more than I thought I would/could.

Based on a popular game from Electronic Arts, Need for Speed has a rather lenghty set-up that takes up a good half hour of your time but ably covers a lot of bases you’ll need to get something out of the final 100 minutes. Tobey Marshall (Aaron Paul) is a good ole boy living in the kind of quaint small time town that so many city denizens would long to visit…for a weekend. Taking over an auto-body shop from his recently deceased dad, he’s seeing the bills pile up and begrudgingly takes an offer from rival Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper) to soup up a car to be sold at auction.

Said car is a beaut and attracts the attention of a Julia, a comely associate (Imogen Poots) of a wealthy business man…and leads to a dangerous situation that sees Tobey imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. Upon his release he sets out for revenge, bringing Julia and a bunch of emotional baggage along for the ride.

A gigantically silly film, I couldn’t help but just sit back and enjoy the ride that the 3D converted film provides. Needing to make it cross-country in less than 48 hours, Tobey burns rubber though scenic vistas while avoiding the police and an array of roadblocks both literal and figurative. Culminating in an illegal street race across the beautiful coast of California, Need for Speed should be credited with never slowing down…because it’s only after the lights come up that you realize how ludicrous the whole thing is.

Compensating for his tiny facial features by pitching his gravely voice to the Christian Bale basement level and over emoting the simplest of line readings, Paul isn’t nearly as impressive here as he was in his award-winning turn on TV’s Breaking Bad. He’s better than Cooper (Dead Man Down, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), though, who isn’t the formidable foe the character and movie calls for. Michael Keaton (recently seen in 2014’s failed Robocopreboot) must have filmed his scenes in a day and laughed all the way to the bank as a hyper mastermind behind the final race.

The grand prix winner of the film is Poots who works the same kind of magic she did with That Awkward Moment earlier in 2014 by effectively stealing the role out from under her male counterparts. I had forgotten she was in this so when she appeared on screen I had the feeling the movie was about to be kicked into a higher gear…and I was right.

Though it hits the skids plot-wise as it nears the finish line, director Scott Waugh stages some mighty fine action sequences that don’t fall victim to repetition. Using very little in the way of visual effects, Waugh is able to up the ante on race films without coming off as showboating. It adds a considerable amount of realism to a non-realistic flick and I enjoyed his employment of interesting camera angles.

This is a film I wish was released later in the summer when I could have seen it at a drive-in movie theater. Though set in present day it has a pleasingly retro-vibe to it even if it lacks the overall cool factor that made classics like Bullitt so monumental in the race genre. If you’re in the mood to put your brain on cruise control and can take your hands off the wheel, Need for Speed could be a road trip worth taking.

Got something you think I should see?Tweet me, or like me and I shall do my best to oblige!

Synopsis: Fresh from prison, a street racer who was framed by a wealthy business associate joins a cross country race with revenge in mind. His ex-partner, learning of the plan, places a massive bounty on his head as the race begins.

Release Date: March 14, 2014

Thoughts: I’ll admit the first time I saw the preview for Need for Speed I feared we had lost star Aaron Paul to the Nicholas Cage darkside of films. The more I saw it though (and I’ve seen it a LOT lately) I’m intrigued by what looks to be a popcorn flick (ala Fast & Furious 6) wanting to emulate those grindhouse-y films from decades ago but filtered through a modern lens. It’s hard to balance a retro-feel with an updated approach but I find myself cautiously optimistic that this will deliver the goods. Bonus points for having the intriguing Imogen Poots (That Awkward Moment) and Michael Keaton (Gung-Ho, also in the RoboCop reboot) on board in supporting roles.

Review: Writer-director Anderson has given cinema several very fine films over the course of his career. Wild and epic, all of his films have a lot of high-level ideas and concepts to them which can make them fun discussion movies when the lights come up. A case could be made that most of these films involve some sort of fatherly figure and the relationship they have with someone they see as their child. In his little seen and underrated Hard Eight, Philip Baker Hall played a wise figure that takes nobody John C. Reilly under his wing and provides tutelage in the world of gambling. Boogie Nights finds the porn producer inhabited by Burt Reynolds guiding protégé Mark Walhberg to becoming a star. Magnolia, There Must Be Blood, and even the dreadful Punch-Drunk Love all find similar situations.

It’s more of the same with Anderson’s newest work, The Master, as it documents the bond formed by a loner veteran Freddie Quell (Phoenix) brought into the fold of The Cause by its founder Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman). As Quell gets in deeper with Dodd and his family (including Adams as his wife), he’s tested greatly physically and mentally until like all Anderson films something inevitably has to give.

There’s some mighty fine acting happening in The Master and it is clear why Hoffman has been nominated for an Oscar for his work. The troubling thing for me is that he’s nominated as a Supporting Actor when he really is a co-lead with the also-nominated Phoenix. (The same thing happened with lead actor Christoph Waltz snagging a Supporting Actor nomination for Django Unchained). Sure, Phoenix is the character the film revolves around but Hoffman has just as much responsibility in the grand scheme of things.

Hoffman can sometimes make me weary as the characters he takes are quite passive but in The Master he delivers a career high performance with a conviction and underlying deceit. He elevates nearly every scene he’s in and does it with an assured ease. It’s clear that Hoffman and Anderson worked in tandem to create this character and it’s a fine example of the symbiosis between an actor’s craft and the written word.

As the troubled Quell, Phoenix is back on the screen after a hiatus from acting that saw the actor go through a truly weird metamorphosis. Phoenix still maintains his unfortunate trait of mumbling through his dialogue and even if it is a character choice that works better with this character than others, it does create an invisible barrier between his performance and the others onscreen.

Anderson’s last film was working with the infamously committed Daniel Day-Lewis and Phoenix is much the same type of method actor. What sets the two actors apart is that Phoenix’s commitment seems unplanned rather than spontaneous and before you say what’s the difference – there is one. Day-Lewis may make his choices in the moment and feed off of others but you know that he’s so invested in the character that even the most unexpected moments come from an understanding of the work itself. On the other hand, Phoenix has more than a few scenes in the movie that feel as if they are in service to him rather than the movie. Still, Phoenix and Hoffman have two dynamite scenes that are so good they dwarf everything and everyone else in the film.

I feel like I’ve seen Adams doing this kind of work for a while now. It’s clear that Adams is an actress with ingenuity and strength but I’m not seeing what the big is with her performance here. For my money it’s not a memorable enough performance to warrant the Supporting Actress nomination she received. I kept waiting for that one scene that would truly blow me away – even if a few moments started up that mountain the peak was never reached in a satisfying way.

Much has been made about the film being a thinly veiled insight into the rise in popularity of Scientology and it’s easy to draw comparisons between the movement started by L. Ron Hubbard and The Master’s movement, The Cause. Not being overly familiar with Scientology I have to say that even if that’s what The Cause is getting at it’s not the central focus of the film. The people at the heart of the matter are what the movie is focused on.

As is the case of all Anderson’s films, this one overstays its welcome. I thought the film was winding up with a nice coda, only to witness an extra 10 minutes that did nothing to make the film better than where it could have stopped. It’s strange that some directors don’t know when to close up shop and go home and Anderson’s The Master (along with Spielberg’s Lincoln and Tarantino’s Django Unchained) winds up being that friend at the party you were happy to see arrive but now just wish would go home so you can sleep.

Review: I remember seeing the teaser trailer for the first Twilight film in early 2008 and the audience absolutely losing their minds with excitement. The strangest thing was that as involved with movies as I was, I had no idea what this movie was or could have anticipated the mania the franchise would create over the next five years. So I did my homework: I read the books, I saw the movies, and I’m still more than a little crazed at how popular this series is. I’ll admit I’m not close to the target demographic but there’s something about the overall message of submission that I can’t get behind.

Okay…maybe I’m reading a bit too much into the saga of Bella Swan (Stewart) who falls hopelessly (and helplessly) in love with Edward Cullen (Pattinson) who just happens to be a vampire that glitters when seen in the light of day. Over the course of five movies, Bella sulked and moped around in the throngs of love while rebuffing the advances of local-boy-turned-werewolf Jacob (Lautner) and avoiding a clan of vampires from Italy.

The best movie in the series is, for my money, the third entry (Eclipse) as it was less about our leads making goo-goo eyes at each other and more about an action centered plot. It’s the only Twilight film I saw twice in the theaters…partly because I liked it and partly because I had tickets that couldn’t be refunded. Eclipse led into Breaking Dawn – Part 1 and I’m still of the mind that the fourth and final novel in Stephenie Meyer’s didn’t need to be broken up into two parts. The only reason it was seems to be written in mega dollar signs – at least the final book of the Harry Potter series was split into two satisfying movies. Breaking Dawn was split into two films that have their moments but fail to fully satisfy the appetite.

For those not familiar with the Twilight saga, beware that spoilers will commence in the next paragraph.

When Breaking Dawn – Part 1 ended, Bella had just given birth to a daughter and then promptly died…but not quite because Edward gave her the bite of her life and her blood red eyes opened right before the credits rolled. After an admittedly agreeable credit sequence, Part 2 picks up with vampire Bella learning her strength and taking time away from mothering her rapidly growing daughter to share more gauzy love scenes with her new husband. The daughter, Renesmee (awful name), is strangely CGI-ed in many scenes…placing the morphed face of the youngster that will eventually play her on several younger iterations. At its best, the effect is interesting. At its worst, the technology makes the child look like a pinhead wearing a dreadful wig.

There’s some nonsense concerning a vengeful vampiress tattling on Bella’s offspring to the Italian vampires (headed with an absurd glee by Sheen) which sets into motion a much talked about battle that takes up the rest of the film (and a large chunk of the novel). Here’s what I don’t get: In all of these films we see vampires travel at great speed to different countries yet in this film it takes the Italian vampires WEEKS to finally make their appearance. Maybe travel was cheaper if they went at off-peak times but still…it’s a wrinkle the film never ironed out.

Stewart, whose hair in the movie is more voluminous that her acting, is her usual glowering self though not quite the sullen sulkstress she’s been previously. Maybe it’s a newfound motherly glow that makes her more interesting this time around but she does tie up her character with some decency. I still get the impression that Stewart couldn’t wait to get done with these films but she’s not nearly as removed as she was in the second film.

Pattinson is another actor that has gained popularity solely based on his performance here and I’m afraid he’ll struggle with his career now that the Cullen story is over. Lacking depth for anything more than looking good, he speaks his lines as if he’s unsure if any of it makes sense…like MadLibs. Lautner is still the worst actor of the bunch and after several failed films outside of the Twilight franchise he should consider another line of work.

The rest of the Twilight cast members are glorified soap opera actors with no one rising above the material at their feet. It’s not good material to begin with, true, but I’d have enjoyed seeing someone do something with the hokey dialogue. Only Fanning as a nasty vampire shows signs of life in an otherwise DOA stable of actors.

The finale of the novel was a flat pancake of a let-down (and fans thought so too) so it was nice to see that screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg and director Condon found a nifty way to have their cake and eat it too. I won’t spoil it for those that haven’t had the chance to see the movie yet, but I’ll say that I found myself on the tail end of the film feeling quite impressed with the tenacity of the filmmakers. A closing “curtain-call” type credit sequence was a nice capper for fans of the series.

As far as good filmmaking goes, this ain’t it…however don’t be too shocked if Breaking Dawn – Part 2 keeps you involved for its trim two hours. You may get a full eye workout from the numerous times you’ll roll them but look…you are either in the camp of voracious fans that have gone nutso for all things Twilight or you aren’t. That’s not to say if you aren’t a fan you can’t enjoy these films for what they are…because on some level they get the job done.

Synopsis: After the birth of Renesmee, the Cullens gather other vampire clans in order to protect the child from a false allegation that puts the family in front of the Volturi.

Release Date: November 16, 2012

Thoughts: Well the vampires are rallying for one last go around as their epic saga comes to a close. At this point, you’re either on board with these films or you roll your eyes at the hoopla that surrounds their release. For me, I’m just happy the conclusion is near. I thought the final book was a tough slough and wasn’t sure why it needed to be broken up into two parts as the second half of Breaking Dawn was especially ho-hum. From the looks of the trailer, however, we may just have a decent coda to Bella and Edward’s story. It may all be smoke and mirrors but I’m wondering if the middling reception of the book led Meyer to allow the film version to get beefed up.